Thursday, April 3, 2025

Restful Wednesday

After the excitement of the Wisconsin win, Wednesday was all about trying out the resistance bands, check, and cooking for the freezer, check.

Cream of red lentil and carrot soup, a favorite 


Today's lunch with multigrain toast, and half a dozen servings to freeze.

I used smoked paprika, fine seasalt and umami seasoning mix, usual onions, garlic, olive oil base.

The relief of having a sofa at a better height is surprising. So much easier to navigate. In other nonnews I think I'm running out of tasks. I scrubbed a step stool..

Happy day everyone, if you find you're scrubbing stepstools, maybe reconsider your life path. I did. I invented the Lazy Lady's Tray Cloth.

Nice piece of batik torn to size and chucked on a favorite tray.  Shameful shabby chic. Tea stains, the pot sometimes drips, won't show. 

Meanwhile here's a mourning dove couple checking for this year's nesting place.


They've nested around here several times, laying eggs in a scrappy nest near the deck, if they don't find anything they like along the front path. 

They're nice neighbors, not too noisy. And considering the state of the nests they throw together, they're in no position to snoot my new traycloth.




 



41 comments:

  1. The mourning dove looks similar to the collared doves we have here

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  2. Mourning doves! I hate them. Perhaps that's too strong. I dislike them. Intensely. Upstairs neighbour feeds them and the constant coo-coo drives me batty. They've decided the tree outside my bedroom window is theirs for nesting or sleeping and the morning chorus of coo-coos lasts almost an hour.

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    1. They do tend to select a group tree. Our flock all congregates on one tree out of the hundreds we have.

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  3. Ha! I’ve seen mourning dove nests. Such sweet, gentle, elegant birds. Such sloppy, inelegant nests. I don’t have a footstool. Maybe I’ll clean the ladder.

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    1. Or you could do what a friend does when anxious -- wash baseboards!

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  4. I'm very unlikely to see mourning doves - they're very rare visitors here, but they're so pretty.

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    1. Their feathers make a whistling sound when they take flight, aerodynamics!

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  5. Mourning doves are such timid birds. Love the sounds they make. They’d be good company!

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    1. They usually have two eggs, very orderly and neat in their habits, if you overlook the randomness of their nests.

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  6. Scrubbiing a step stool? Noooooooooooooo!

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  7. I like the tray cloth and understand the color scheme. Years ago when I worked with parrots I used to wear multicolored tops in the colors of parrot poop.

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  8. I like your tea cloth! Very clever!

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    1. I briefly considered stitching a hem, then decided that would be against the spirit of the thing.

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  9. Many doves come to our feeder and my husband is not overly fond of them. He was watching them yesterday and said, "Those birds spend so much time in there that one of them is just going to lay an egg in it."
    You scrubbed a step-ladder? Goodness, woman!

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    1. Doves feed at ground level usually. I don't think I ever saw them in the feeder. A step stool, the folding kind. Mitchell's going to scrub a ladder, I think.

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  10. I love mourning doves. I love to hear their sounds but I have never seen their nests. I will have to pay more attention.
    I can waste time and am learning not to feel guilty about it. It has taken some getting used to but I have been working on it since I retired. ;)

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    1. You might not recognize a mourning dove nest as a nest. Just a few bits of grass and twigs thrown about, not the kind other birds build. So you might have seen them without knowing it.

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  11. Scrubbing stepstools? What is this world coming to? Obviously I'm sadly lacking with my housekeeping because that's something I would never have thought of doing.
    Glad the mourning doves are back. There's often one or two sitting on the sewing room windowsill peering in to see what I'm doing. Didn't see them this winter though because most of the winter the sill was filled with too much snow.

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    1. It's a white plastic stool and I was so tired of seeing how dirty it was!
      The mourning doves are always with us, a local flock. I love the way they toddle about.

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  12. I had a dove lay an egg right on the dirt of a potted plant on my balcony one year. Silly little lady.

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    1. Here, too. I think they saw the pot as a ready to move in decorate home

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  13. I'm currently eying my step stool....

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  14. I scrubbed a step stool last week--ROFL! But I am far from out of tasks on my to-do list. ;)
    That soup looks so good. Too many carbs for me on Keto, but it reminded me of this carrot soup recipe I got from my mom that I used to make--just delicious! It will be so nice to have those bowls ready for you while you are hold up recovering. :)

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    1. The stepstool theme seems to be universal! The soup is lovely, thick, spicy, filling.

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  15. If the day ever comes when I find myself scrubbing a stepstool . . . well, I won't.

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    1. You might find yourself a helpless prawn of fate.

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  16. Oh to have a stepstool to scrub (or baseboard for that matter). Tea tray would be further up my hierarchy of needs however and there are a few things even higher up than that to deal with before I get to enjoy a beautiful batik tray cloth self fringed.

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    1. You're still involved with diggers and loaders and other such heavy equipment. Tray cloths are a future dream.

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  17. LOL. Scrubbing the stepstool was the job that I gave to my grandson when he was little, to keep him out of my way while I was scrubbing the bathroom floor. I just sat him in the bathtub with the stool, a brush and a squirt gun. He scrubbed his little heart out.

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    1. I could have used his help. But he might be a little past that age now.

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  18. LOL on the stepstool scrubbing. We all have things we have to do of course, for me it was a day of picking rocks out of the yard along the long driveway.
    The nice part about the busy work is that I didn't think about anything but rocks, grass, and dirt. Such a nice but back breaking job to just ... do.
    Love that soup!

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    1. Some days you just need to do a non thinking task, for various tough reasons, yes.

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  19. Your soup looks spectacular. I am resting my back because it turns out that standing on a street corner with my sign at a Vivek Ramaswarmy event takes a lot out of an old lady. Need to get myself sorted out by Saturday's protest.

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  20. I've seen smoked paprika called for in several recipes, and finally bought some the other week. Your red lentil soup looks really good; maybe that will be the place to try the paprika.

    Great idea for the tray cloth too.

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    1. It has a lovely mellow flavor, not sharp like the regular paprika. Just right for this thick cream soup. Let us know how you like it when you try it.

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  21. One of our step stools usually gets scrubbed (or at least sprayed down) once a year as I take it outside to clean windows. I clean windows AND step stools. What does that say? lol That's a pretty cloth - very chic, not so shabby, I think. ;^)

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